Raindrops on Roses
It is hard to miss. When it’s not sunny out here, it seems the options of what to do with one’s day are severely limited. One would think that spending a lifetime in an area where there are between 120 days (NYC) and 160 days (Ithaca) of annual precipitation, would make one accustomed to getting through a rainy day. Out here there are closer to 20 rain days in a year and we are always saying that we can really use the rain for the garden, yadda, yadda. But the truth for me is that after one day of rain, I am ready for a return to sunshine. Given that I never used to have much respect for people who made their life choices based on sunshine, there must be an addictive quality to sunshine. Given that sunshine produces vitamin D in the skin and that vitamin D significantly increases the body’s production of dopamine, I’m prepared to say that sunshine is addictive. Dopamine increases pleasure, satisfaction and motivation. That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? The absence of sufficient dopamine basically makes you a slug.
This becomes confusing for me because my years in what I would call southern climes (some tropical, some subtropical and some just warmer than I would generally prefer) reminds me that the combination of the siesta approach to life and the generally slower pace brought on by warmer weather may be an indicator of pleasure and even satisfaction, but its hard to imagine a place of motivation in all that afternoon napping. The harsh weather of the more northern parts of the world tend to force people to strap it on and put their shoulder to the wheel. I’ve always felt that in places where survival was harder, there is more natural momentum to propel mankind in a productive direction. Sleeping away the sunny and perhaps humid midday part of your existence never seems to lead to enough replacement work in the evening to make up for the mellow portion of the day and the end result is to figuratively just pick another piece of fruit off the tree rather than expend the effort to plant or cultivate something. That can and does work in southern climes and probably does not work so well in places where a lack of sufficient firewood or preserved provisions can get you through a harsh winter. I know a lack of daylight like what is had in the far northern latitudes during winter is cause for great depression and alcoholism in the population, and that seems to comport with the dopamine deficiency brought about by less sunlight and vitamin D. So perhaps there is a diminishing return effect at play here where if you drop too much latitude you pass that motivational sweet-spot.
Since the globe should have pretty similar aspects to it in the Southern Hemisphere to what it has in the Northern, why do we not see humans from extreme southern areas achieving the sort of greatness and stoicism that those in the north follow? I guess some of that is due to the simple geographical differences that tend to gather vast amounts of land in the north and only narrow spits of land in the south. Has the planetary geophysics given us a northern bias that causes us to think of industriousness as a thing of the north and laziness a thing of the south? That doesn’t seem altogether fair, but I’m not sure the word fair enters into the vocabulary of Mother Nature or Darwinism.
While in this day and age, snowbirds migrate either with the seasons or once and for all to the warmer southern places for their end of life experiences, it is unclear to me if that is all that relevant to industriousness and motivation given that snowbirds are generally past their peak motivational moment…or at least that is the norm amongst retired folks like me. We have all become southerners to one degree or another and prefer sunshine to dreary weather through which we have all worked for years. But with aging and climate change, that has all been thrown into a cocked hat in many ways.
To begin with, the sunshine we all chased in our youth and relished for tanning and general feel-good purposes is now a dermatological nightmare for many of us. It so happens that I have been lucky enough to avoid any serious melanomas or other sun-related skin conditions (not that I don’t have the occasional questionable rough patch), but I am once again in the minority in that regard. Most people my age can be seen at one time or another with a bandage over some very obvious part of their head or neck, signifying some hopefully minor surgical procedure to remove some form of basil cell carcinoma (hopefully not a melanoma). And then there is the white lotion smeared all over the face and neck and the long sleeves of UV-resistant shirting…not to mention a broad-rimmed floppy hat. In Australia, near where the biggest hole in the Ozone Layer lives, they say Slip, Slop, Slap for slipping on a shirt or “rash guard”, slopping on sunblock, and slapping on a nice big sun hat.
Of course, the Climate Change impact of sunshine has eclipsed (pun intended) the effects of aging skin and we are well beyond conjecture as to impact. The western drought is now of epic proportions, causing a wholesale change in the Colorado River and all the watershed, power generation and recreational uses my generation and before have relied upon from this grand old man river. The wildfire risk alone has been enough to jack up our homeowner’s insurance premiums to astronomical levels. And least our Eastern cousins feel left out, the risk of storm surge, rising seas, hurricanes, tornadoes and derechos, all direct products of manmade Climate Change, have equally driven up their homeowner’s casualty premiums as well.
I don’t want a lack of fresh water to hinder my gardening activities (as though that should be my biggest concern) so a little bit of rain is always welcome. But I am now seeing a new meteorological expression which I must admit I have never noticed or heard of before: an atmospheric river. Apparently it is a term coined at MIT about 25 years ago and refers to a corridor of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere. It is sometimes called a cloud band or vapor surge or a tropical plume, but it is basically a band of moisture that is most often seen crossing the northern Pacific Ocean and heading into the Pacific Northwest and California. These rivers usually come one at a time and dump some water on the western shores from north to south, basically in the same direction as the prevailing wind flow.
We are currently looking at an unusual phenomenon out here in that the weather forecasts are looking at something like 10 consecutive days of rainy weather that have wiggled around on the forecasts, but have not gone away on the horizon over the last few days. In the three years I have lived out here, I have not seen more than a few days of rain forecasted. I will be watching closely this next week as the National Weather Service tells us that we are about to see the convergence of three atmospheric rivers at once with the end result being an outcome that can range from extremely beneficial to extremely hazardous. They are also tricky in that they can seem to be beneficial and then have long term hazards…and vice versa. So they are not easy to figure out and the convergence of three just makes things all the more interesting. Atmospheric rivers are categorized like hurricanes and are rated AR-Cat1 through AR-Cat5. I’m not sure of the rating on the three storms underway, but they are expected to drop 10 feet of snow in the Sierras. We have already seen the Drought rating drop for 94% to 81% and these three monsters should drop us into the 60% level or below.
So, as they say, cry me a river over the lack of sunshine and the pleasures that all brings and then check in with me in a few more days to see what all these river of dreams do for our drought tolerance. In the meantime, I will just keep hoping for more raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, since I could easily see these becoming several of my favorite things.